Katie Couric’s Cancer Journey: From Grief to Advocacy to Her Own Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

We have a special pod for you today. Katie Couric recently sat down with me at The Paley Center for Media in New York City. We discussed how cancer has touched many of her family members, including a recent diagnosis of her own. We also discussed her role as "screen queen," promoting cancer screenings for all, and how the media can make a positive impact on public health. Let's talk about it.

Hello, I'm Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and welcome to Cancer Straight Talk. We're bringing together national experts and patients fighting these diseases to have evidence-based conversations. Our mission is to empower you and your family members to make the right decisions and live happier, healthier lives. For more information on the topics discussed here, or to send us your questions, please visit us at mskcc.org/podcast.

What an honor to be joined here today with Katie Couric at The Paley Center for Media in New York City, award-winning journalist, author, trailblazer, and all-around American icon. And I, the cancer doc, are going to try to interview you. Lordy.

Katie Couric:

You're going to be great. I know it. Don't worry. And this is fun being at The Paley Center. I think this is one of the first podcasts in their soundproof booth, and we have an audience outside, which is so nice. Everyone came to listen to us. So thank you all for coming and thank you for inviting me on the show.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Thank you. It's such a tremendous honor, and you've really been such an advocate for cancer screenings and for the importance of early cancer detection. Your voice and promotion has literally translated into saving thousands of lives.

It all started with that “little pretty colon” that was seen around the world. The number of colonoscopies shot up 20% nationwide after that, and your role in inspiring others to get cancer screenings in the medical community and beyond is known as the Couric Effect. And you did not stop there. Your mission and role as "screen queen" continued over the years. You shared your "His and Hers" colonoscopies with your husband, John, who is with us today, and just this past year while documenting your mammogram, you revealed your personal story of breast cancer. So Katie, thank you so much for joining me today.

Katie Couric:

Oh, it's an honor. I should be interviewing you because you're so impressive, Diane, with all the work you're doing and you're saving lives every day. So it's an honor to be here with you as well.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Well, it certainly takes a village, and I am a GI cancer doc and I care for patients with neuroendocrine cancers as well as colon cancers. We'll talk about that a little bit later. For those who may not have yet read your amazing, brutally honest book, Going There, can you share with us your personal connection with colon cancer in particular and how that started?

Katie Couric:

Of course. You know, I was really lucky until I turned 40. I had sort of this picture-perfect life. No one in my family had ever really been sick, and then when I was 40 and my husband was 41, he – Jay Monahan – he was diagnosed with stage four metastatic colon cancer. It kind of came out of the blue – in retrospect, less out of the blue than I originally thought – but it was a shock and it was incredibly traumatic, as you might imagine. Our daughters at the time of his diagnosis were one and five, and when he died, they were two and six. So he battled the disease for nine months and it was as harrowing as you could imagine. That was my first experience really with someone very close to me being diagnosed with this disease, and I became an expert of sorts because I put on my reporter's hat and tried to learn everything I could about the disease.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

We see that often, you know, the caregivers feeling this responsibility, but you certainly took it that much further. I would like to go back to that day more than 20 years ago when you decided to broadcast your first colonoscopy on the Today show. Let's take a listen.

The Today Show, March 2000:

From NBC News, this is Today. I have a pretty little colon. That's where the small intestine is. In other words, we're six feet up. We're six feet up? Geez, that's reassuring, Dr. Ford. Thank you for sharing that point with me. Now we're at the end. We've reached the end of the colon. End of the line. So we're going to come out now. That's it? Really? Yeah. No, stay up there a little longer. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Okay Katie, that's it. That wasn't bad at all. No, no.

Katie Couric:

That was the propofol speaking.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

There was a little anesthesia going on! Did you have any understanding of the impact that made? I mean, you literally that day rebranded colonoscopies and you just demystified it in a way. People never talked about colons or the idea of endoscopies and yet, you clearly made an impact that even today there's less of a stigma associated. Did you know it at the time that it was going to be so powerful?

Katie Couric:

I didn't know what impact it would have, but I knew that it was something I felt compelled and really responsible to do. We had millions of people watching every morning. I think a lot of people followed what had happened to Jay and it was covered in the press. We kept as quiet as we could about his situation, but people knew when he died. It was announced on the show.

I felt that I needed to educate people so they could know that with early detection there's an over 90% cure rate. I became almost encyclopedic with my knowledge of colon cancer and colonoscopies. Obviously, he was too young to be screened and to get a colonoscopy, but I think, had I known everything then that I know now, I would've been much more aware of the symptoms. I think I would've urged him to talk to his doctor about colon cancer screening, but like so many young men, Jay didn't even have an internist. He came to my internist when he was doubled over in pain and our nanny called right after the Today show ended and said, "You need to come home. Jay is really in excruciating pain." So I just felt I wanted to spare other families from what we had endured, and I thought this is probably something that needed to be done.

I think that we have this phobia about talking about this part of our bodies. I was reading The Emperor of All Maladies by Sid Mukherjee – which won a Pulitzer Prize and is sort of the history of cancer – and I thought it was so interesting that in the 1950s when they were looking for a support group for women with breast cancer, in The New York Times they couldn't say "breast cancer." They said, "cancer of the chest cavity." We just have to remove these stigmas. I think people weren't comfortable talking about colons and talking about poop and talking about all the things that we do to have healthy bodies. I remember reading a book to my girls when they were little called "Everybody Poops." I feel like that should be required reading for adults now too because we need to normalize these conversations, and having a healthy colon and preventing colon cancer is just a critical part of maintaining your overall health.

So to answer your question, Diane, which was very long-winded for me, I was delighted that people paid attention. The fact that people listened and paid attention and went and got screened was incredibly gratifying. I got so many letters: people thanking me that people found polyps, or they found cancerous polyps, or the cancer was detected early enough that they had chemotherapy, but that they were doing well. I had people sending me pictures of their colons and I was like, "Thanks for sharing." Sometimes they would go into a lot of detail and I'd be like, "TMI. Thanks. I'm glad you got screened." But yes, of course. I mean, the idea that you delivered information that helped save someone's life – that prompted them to take action and that action saved their lives – I mean, of course, what better feeling is there than that?

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

So for those that are listening: Anyone 45 and older, we very much should get those colonoscopies. Like you said, look for those polyps. You take them out and then you can prevent the cancer from happening.

Katie Couric:

That's right, and it's important that you note that the age has been reduced to 45. For Black Americans, it has been 45 for some time, but because of the alarming incidents of colorectal cancer in younger patients, the age has been lowered. I am working with exact sciences because you can also do stool tests. I think a colonoscopy is still considered the quote-unquote gold standard, but there are some people who won't get a colonoscopy, who, for various reasons, they can't. They have no insurance, they don't have access, they can't miss work, they have daycare concerns, and so any test is really better than no test at all. Whatever test gets done.

I really urge people to talk to their doctors to get a screening that's right for them because still, one in three people are not screened for colorectal cancer, and that means a lot of people will die unnecessarily. When you think about colon cancer being the number two cancer killer of men and women combined, that is a lot of people. I think 51,000 or 52,000 people die every year, and that's the same number of people who died in the Vietnam War. So I think we need to really spread the word and keep talking about it because that's one of those things that people will just soon forget about.

Nobody really, for a whole host of reasons, wants to necessarily get screened for a lot of different cancers, but it's so important. I always think, I don't want people to say, "If only. If only I had gotten screened." I always also do the guilt trip on people. I'm like, “It's really selfish not to get screened because if you want to be around for the people you love and the people who love and depend on you, you owe it to them to get screened.” If all else fails, I do the guilt trip.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Good. As you should. Many people may not have known, in the years following Jay's death, cancer did strike again in your family. Can you share any advice to some of the family members, particularly as a caregiver, or some things that you've learned in retrospect over the years? Your sister, your mother-in-law, and now actually your second husband have also had cancer, so any words of advice? I will say that actually many of my patients have said that your example to push forward, particularly after reading your book, has really been the whisper in their ear that it's possible to move forward. By example, you taught us all how to overcome things that feel like they're the unthinkable.

Katie Couric:

I think before we even talk about moving forward, I think there are so many unanswered questions about how you help someone who has cancer. I think this needs to be a bigger national dialogue because I think people are so afraid of death. They're so afraid of terminal illness. I don't think anyone really knows how to deal with it.

This lovely woman came up to me and said, "I read your book. It was so helpful, and one line has stuck with me, and the line in the book was something like, 'I did everything I could to help keep Jay alive. I wish I had done a better job of helping him die.'" I still think it is really hard to navigate how to deal with a terminal illness. I think everyone needs a social worker, a therapist, some kind of guidance for people on how to talk about these things, because I was in a state of denial. Jay and I never talked about, "What if?" The closest we came, as I wrote in my book, was we had a house in Millbrook, New York and I said, "I don't know if I'll be able to come to this house if you're not around," and all he said was, "Well, I hope it will be full of happy memories." That's the closest we came to acknowledging that he may not survive, and he had stage four colon cancer and the odds of him surviving that for any period of time, back then in 1997 when he was diagnosed, were so small. And yet we couldn't face the possibility. It was too painful.

My nephew's an oncologist. My sister Emily died of pancreatic cancer and her son Ray is an oncologist, and I said to Ray, "You know, you have to deal with so much sadness and tell people such terrible news. How do you handle that?" He said, "I had a man, 38, with two little kids, and I had to tell him and his wife that there were no more therapies." So he said, "Sometimes I just sit in the room and cry with them."

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Yeah, and I do the same. I think that there is a fine line between hope and honesty and transparency, but I actually think you can do all of those things. I will say that I think one of the challenges is when it happens so fast. I mean, nine months is a very short period of time. You're in the storm. You're really trying to figure out and, like you said, getting information and trying your best to figure out what we can do to move to the next play. It's not like other times where you may have a couple of years to sort of think about it. I do think that transparency and honesty and sort of saying, "I don't know.” You know, I can't play God to know exactly when something might happen as a cancer doc, but I can sort of say, "What is important to you towards the end of life? You know, what might be something that you want folks to remember you by, et cetera?" It's just very hard to do that when it's such a short period of time.

Katie Couric:

Honestly, that feels like a stake in my heart even to hear you say that because, as you said, there's such a fine line between hope and being realistic. For me, I think I was sort of Pollyanna during the whole ordeal because I didn't want the rest of Jay's life to be full of despair. I wanted him to have the hope that would kind of keep him going. And maybe he knew and pretended that he didn't for me, who knows? But it's very complicated and I feel like maybe people should talk about things like this before they get sick, you know?

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Well, that's the ideal and I do think that we are trying to have more of those conversations. In fact, one of our guests here tonight brought to MSK something called "Death Over Dinner," where you actually sit around a table and you say, "What would be important to you before you pass? What do you want people to know about you?" to have these conversations early on so that you can reflect on them whenever that time comes, because, you know, all of us have no guarantees, right?

Katie Couric:

Right, and all of us are going to end up in the same place, you know? Anyway!

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

So fast forward, you recently had another Couric Effect in action. You decided to document your mammogram because you were six months behind, like many of us during the COVID crisis, and you thought it would be a good reminder for women. Let's take a listen.

Instagram @katiecouric, October 6, 2022:

Okay, hold your breath. Okay, you can cover up. There was one area where the tissue looked a little bit more distorted than in the past. We're going to go back to ultrasound. What I saw was a mass and I said, "I think we really need to turn the camera off. I want to speak frankly." So can I stop for a second here?

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

How did that feel? I mean, it was certainly a different diagnosis in terms of a different cancer, but boy, I can only imagine. How did you feel when that happened, and in particular when the diagnosis was made?

Katie Couric:

It was really weird because I've had so much experience with cancer with Jay and then with my sister Emily. My mother-in-law Carol had ovarian cancer when Jay was diagnosed. I've had many friends with cancer. As you mentioned, my husband John had a carcinoid tumor a couple of months before we were married and that was a nightmare. So I've been through it, and my mom had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and my dad had had a couple of different cancers, so I sort of had known every body part involving cancer.

I was actually very calm about it. It was weird. I thought, "Okay." She did a biopsy immediately and then called me the next day and said she had found something, that it was cancerous, and I think she reassured me right away that it had been detected early. And despite the fact that I was six months late – you know, I was pretty religious about getting my mammogram – I just felt really fortunate. Fortunate because I could afford to get a mammogram and ultrasound, and just fortunate that it was 2022 and that modern medicine was able to detect something like that so early.

I kept thinking about people, you know, underserved patients who don't have access, who don't have insurance, who don't necessarily have the knowledge culturally, maybe don't feel as comfortable with doctors and with screening, with good reason in some cases given our history. I kept thinking it's unfair to have an almost caste system of medical care in the United States. So I thought a lot about that. I don't know, I just thought, "God, I'm lucky I can get this taken care of and I'm pretty sure it's not going to kill me. It's not only treatable, they told me it's curable." So I felt very grateful, honestly.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

I think we are very grateful that you again shared that experience so that others would go and get their mammograms and/or ultrasounds when needed. Over the years other colleagues have followed your lead and have used their voice to share their journeys with illnesses and cancers. We know that that's obviously a personal choice for people to decide, but when the media covers these high-profile people – celebs, influencers – there's no question there's an uptick in that screening. Do you think the media has a role and a responsibility of using their voice?

Katie Couric:

I think it's a highly personal decision in terms of sharing something that has happened to you. I think some people have different comfort levels, so I don't think anyone has a personal responsibility to share their individual stories, but I do think the media writ large needs to educate the public and do a really good job of arming them with lifesaving knowledge.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about my breast cancer journey, and actually that I wanted to talk about getting my mammogram, was that I realized women were not educated about breast density. Through my reporting after I was diagnosed, I discovered that 45% of women aged 40 and over have what are considered dense breasts, and that makes it very difficult for an abnormality or a tumor to be discovered through mammography, and those women really need additional screening like a breast ultrasound or an MRI. The problem is, if you have dense breasts, if you're part of that 45%, your insurance often doesn't pay for additional screenings, so it's only women of means who are able to prevent breast cancer in those cases. So now I am a lunatic talking about dense breasts.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

I love it. Tell us what you've been doing, in particular the Find It Early Act.

Katie Couric:

So the FDA recently – I had nothing to do with this so I can't claim any credit because they made the proposal in 2019, but because the nation had a lot of other health issues to deal with, they were delayed in implementing it, but they did call me so I think maybe I lit a bit of a fire under them – now the FDA has a new ruling that goes into effect in September of 2024 that says all clinicians and doctors and radiologists have to inform women that they have dense breasts.

Now 38 states already do, but the language wildly varies among these states. And oftentimes it's like, "Hey, just so you know, Diane, your mammogram was fine, but you do have dense breasts." And people are like, "Oh that's interesting. What am I supposed to do with that information?" Now, in very clear, concise language, the clinic has to notify the woman and say, "You have dense breasts. In most cases you need additional screening. You need to talk to your doctor, " and so that's great.

Now the next step is something called the Find It Early Act. John makes fun of me. He says, "Who do you think you are? Nancy Pelosi?" because I went down to Washington and I was at a press conference with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who's been a real advocate for all kinds of health issues. We are trying to get insurance coverage required for women for secondary screenings, for women who have dense breasts, because so many cases are missed and if they're missed, they're not diagnosed early enough to have a favorable outcome like mine.

So the US Preventative Services Task Force is also looking at this because so many doctors take their lead, as well as insurance companies, from their recommendations. They are looking at this and hopefully they'll come up with recommendations that say, "If you have dense breasts, you need to get follow-up screening,” and in that case, we won't need the legislation. But if they don't, hopefully legislation will pass that will require insurance companies to pay for these additional screenings with no out-of-pocket expenses for the woman.

I laughed the other day because I said, "If we spend as much time on women's health issues as we have Viagra, we probably wouldn't have these problems."

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

One hundred percent.

Katie Couric:

What's up with that, by the way? Women’s health is so ignored and neglected. It's really a travesty.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Speaking of legislation and public health, have traditional sources of information about public health – the CDC, the FDA – do you think they've lost credibility?

Katie Couric:

Sadly, I think because of COVID – and I'm sure you have many thoughts on this – because it was evolving in real time, there were often no simple or black and white answers to what was going on because science doesn't work that way. It's imperfect, it's iterative, and it comes in fits and starts and sometimes things have to be adjusted. I'm so proud of all the scientists who worked so hard during the pandemic and the public health officials who had to communicate to people what was going on when sometimes they themselves didn't know. So I think as a result of that and a result of polarization and disinformation, misinformation, and malformation – all kinds of disinformation now – that some people have lost faith in science.

You and I were talking before we sat down for this podcast that this was happening prior to the pandemic. There was a kind of a decline in our faith in expertise for some weird reason. I mean, this probably would require a whole other podcast but it's really, really upsetting. There was sort of this anti-intellectualism that was bubbling up that we saw in politics especially, and I think that that has bled into science, and obviously politics and science were inextricably linked during the pandemic.

So I do think they have to work hard to build up their credibility, but it's often difficult when there is so much disinformation out there and people have created their own information ecosystems. It's very, very frustrating but I'm hoping the pendulum will shift the other way. All we can do is try to give people information. I mean, you saw that with the vaccine happening. And of course now one of the biggest areas of promise for cancer prevention are vaccines. So you hope that that mistrust won't prevent people from getting potentially lifesaving vaccines that will prevent them from ever getting cancer in the first place.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

That's right, and very similar technology to what was done.

Katie Couric:

mRNA, that technology, I think is going to power a lot of cancer vaccines, which is so exciting. I'm really excited about what's on the horizon for cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

As am I. In fact, one of the reasons why I started this podcast was just that. Particularly in the cancer space, there's so much disinformation. I mean, you go on Google and there's just crazy stuff on how you should treat.

Katie Couric:

Well, Google shouldn't let that happen.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

They shouldn't, and so we're really trying to drive an understanding based on the evidence, just like you're doing in your own media company. Where do you get your information about your own public health in general? Do you have a trusted source that you use?

Katie Couric:

I go to a lot of different sources for information, but I always look at the source. You know, I always say, "Oh, that's from this,” and then I'll do a little more digging and say, "Oh, they're this group. They have a political agenda," and then I discount what they say. I think you have to be a very educated consumer. You have to really be a critical thinker and evaluate things. I think in the current media landscape, it's absolutely essential.

I pretty much know and recognize, through my years of reporting, trusted sources like Lancet or The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal and other medical places that I've heard of. There are a lot of sketchy medical organizations that look like they're really legit and have, you know, the seal and all that stuff, but you dig a little deeper and you realize, oh this is really crazy town.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

That's right. If it's okay, we're going to go to some questions that our audience actually asked for us. What has been the most gratifying for you, in terms of using your platform to further cancer research? We didn't get a chance to talk about Stand Up to Cancer, which has been absolutely tremendous in terms of what you've done to help move forward the cancer research platform.

Katie Couric:

You know, I think the purpose of Stand Up to Cancer was collaboration instead of competition. When I was going through everything with Jay, it was very difficult because I felt like people were proprietary. I was calling everywhere trying to get information. I think we all realized that instead of competition, if there was more collaboration and scientists shared their knowledge and their research and their tissue samples, that we would be able to move science forward faster. I think Stand Up to Cancer has contributed to nine FDA-approved drugs. They were involved in Dr. Diaz's rectal cancer study at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

It was a complete response with immunotherapy.

Katie Couric:

Right. I think cancer research is so critically important. What I think is so fascinating is that there used to be very organ-specific cancer research and now I think scientists are understanding much better how cancer in general behaves, and certain therapies can actually be incredibly effective for a whole host of cancers, including obviously immunotherapy, which people laughed at 20 years ago, which is building up your own immune system to quash the cancer cells. I think most of our research dollars are now going to immuno-therapeutic approaches. So I geek out on all this stuff.

Just these scientists are so brilliant and they're so, I think, under-appreciated in our society. They're working day in and day out, they are crazy smart, and I just think they deserve a lot of attention and funding. I remember reading that only one in 10 promising research proposals was approved and funded by the NCI and I thought, that means like 90% of good ideas are left on the cutting room floor. How could that be?

That's why I think it's been wonderful to see organizations like Stand Up to Cancer and a host of really incredible organizations that are raising money for cancer research and keeping these scientists going. I think it's so important and so exciting, and now we're at this super cool time with technology and basic biology and data and epigenetics and A.I.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

A.I. That's palpable.

Katie Couric:

What do you think specifically A.I. is going to be able to do when it comes to cancer diagnosis and treatment?

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

I just think that the idea of big data – an example of that was what you said before where we used to take breast cancer, which is hundreds of different diseases, and just because it started in the breast, lump them all together for all these trials – now we can start to define these different diseases genetically, put them all into these databases, and then even have the ability to start thinking technologically about, "Okay, what might drive that?" through these programs. The ability to sort of take all that big data together and then have that drive the clinical trials that we're going to conduct is going to be really exciting.

Katie Couric:

And A.I. is going to help to power that.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Yeah. I think the big data and the ability to utilize that data in an easier way is going to get us to where we need to be.

Katie Couric:

Can I ask you one more question? So I mentioned earlier that a lot more young people are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer. I have people come up to me all the time – also breast cancer but let's just focus on colorectal for the moment – but why do you think that's happening? It seems that doctors are slightly flummoxed about this and don't really understand it. I've heard the old obesity argument just doesn't really seem to hold water.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

That's absolutely not it.

Katie Couric:

But what do you think it is? And why don't we know, by the way?

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

I think that the piece on what we call the epidemiology, or understanding how the cancer develops, is not a very, um–

Katie Couric:

Sexy field?

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Sexy or even funded field, because to cast that net, it's so wide to understand, and the reason for that is multifold. But the biggest challenge is that cancer over time, which I'm sure you've learned, starts from the damage in the cell called the gene, which is a mutation. So the gene gets damaged with this mutation. What can happen is, you have that one damage mutation — it may happen when we're 12 years old — and then over time, maybe another mutation develops a couple years later, and then another mutation develops. I use the analogy of the bingo card. It actually takes a couple of mutations before bingo. Now the cell turns on instead of turns off and the cancer develops.

What damages all those different mutations or genes over time is different for everyone. Sometimes it's just our own immune system, you know, messing up and not correcting itself. Sometimes it's in the environment. I do think for colon cancer, there's probably something about what we call that microbiome, which is all the bacteria in the colon that may have changed the flora over time. Why it changed and what that really means, we’re just not there yet.

Katie Couric:

Do you think it's some dietary difference that's making it change? Something like chemicals and processed foods? I just don't understand.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

I will say I'm not sure, but most of my patients, some of whom are actually with us tonight, they are the picture-perfect health and they got colon cancer. They didn't eat crap. Excuse my phrase. You know, they did everything right and these cancers still developed. So I think there's more to learn.

Katie Couric:

There's still so much to learn and that's why, getting back to research, it's so important to fund these scientists.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

Well that's what we're going to do. Katie Couric, thank you so much for being part of that team and for joining me today.

Katie Couric:

You're welcome. Thanks Diane. Thanks for letting me ask a couple questions too.

Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes:

If you want more news from Katie, go to katiecouric.com and sign up for Wake-Up Call, her daily newsletter.

Thank you for listening to Cancer Straight Talk from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. For more information or to send us your questions, please visit us at mskcc.org/podcast. Help others find this helpful resource by rating and reviewing this podcast at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Any products mentioned on this show are not official endorsements by Memorial Sloan Kettering. These episodes are for you but are not intended to be a medical substitute. Please remember to consult your doctor with any medical conditions you may have. I'm Dr. Diane Reidy-Lagunes. Onward and upward.